Tuesday, February 01, 2005

George Galloway - Cupid Stunt

The whole sorry farrago is entirely rancid, but I think it's worth cherry picking a few of the more bullshit-heavy moments.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, was it the Times of London, which newspaper
settled with you and apologized?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, how long have you
got? All of them have settled and apologized, and The Daily Telegraph is the one
I think you refer to which was my biggest victory. They had to pay me 150,000
pounds in damages and 1.6 million pounds in damages.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Because they falsely claimed that I was in the pay of the
Saddam Hussein dictatorship.

Untrue. Galloway won his court case on the narrow legal grounds that the Telegraph had not offered him right to reply and that the newspaper had allowed editorialised commentary to slip into what should rightly have been a purely straight factual piece of reportage. At no stage have the claims against George Galloway been in any way shape or form disproved and the ultimate judgement against the Telegraph was not founded on these claims.

Contrast this:

The Sunni Muslim population, which if you add the Sunni Kurds and the
Sunni Arabs together, is some 40% of the population, are deeply anxious about
the way in which the occupying forces are deliberately trying to divide the
country along confessional lines.

With this:

In Malaya when we crushed the Malayan revolt for freedom, we killed
10,000 Malays. I’ve seen pictures of British soldiers holding the severed heads
of Malay people for the cameras. This is how all occupations end.

Now, either Galloway hasn't the first idea what he's talking about here or he's simply so consumed with dogmatic bullshit that he's doing a Tony Benn and plucking superficially impressive historical analogies out of thin air that subsequently turn out to be complete nonsense when exposed to further scrutiny or an informed audience.

The "Malayan Revolt for Freedom" as Galloway terms it was largely a conflict that stemmed from internal population divisions of precisely the type that Galloway accuses the Anglo-American forces of trying to stir up in Iraq - divisions that the British worked hard to prevent and ultimately did successfully solve. I seriously doubt that Galloway has seen photos of severed Malay heads, given that the Malay majority sided almost universally with the British. The insurgents were composed almost universally of ethnic Chinese who were fighting in part for Communism but in greater part for non-ideological resons based not around a wish for the British to leave (though they did want that) but around a fear that they would be marginalised and persecuted in any post-independence settlement once the British had left. The British won in large part by acting as honest brokers between the two ethnic communities, pressuring the Malay majority to provide an equitable settlement for the Chinese - a settlement that has continued to this day. By establishing themselves in this way they gradually drained away non-Communist support for the insurgents among the Chinese population until the insurgency was reduced to a husk consisting of hardline ideologues. When the British left, they left one of the most - if not THE most - accountable and liberal (in relative terms, of course) governments in the region and a settlement that has endured to this day. Perhaps Mr Galloway should ask some Malaysians (Malay or Chinese) whether they'd sooner have lived in Vietnam under his Viet Minh buddies. Or in Indonesia under Sukharno which tried to undermine the post-independence federation - until the SAS came back and gave him a damn good thrashing.

And while he's at it, maybe he'd like to explain how a Far Left, radical socialist MP manages to live the sort of lifestyle that makes Neil and Christine Hamilton look a couple of chimney sweep ragamuffins.* Arsehole.**

*Given "Gorgeous"'s propensity to sue at the drop of a hat, I feel I ought to point out that this is a question expressed through genuine intellectual curiosity and is in no way intended to imply in any way that he's as gross an example of personal, intellectual and moral corruption as has ever slithered onto the British political scene since the days of Horatio Bottomley.

**While we're at it, the word "arsehole" is employed in its broadest and most positive sense... etc.